ONLINE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM. . .

...oh er....

This was a book where the thing I disliked about it was also the thing that kept me interested!
Initially, I didn’t think this book was going to be for me. Despite being reasonably gripped by the opening chapter, I felt that I wasn’t the target audience, made me feel a bit old to be honest! I’m not a social media addict (I’ve only recently dipped my toes into facebook!) & while twitter is a world I am quite happy to live without, I can’t deny that I find the idea of a “#murderer” & he/she being followed on line an intriguing one.

The basic plot is that investigative journalist Freddie (well she’s more of a wannabee journalist) & police officer Nasreen are, quote..”thrown together in a desperate struggle to catch this cunning killer”. Well not exactly “thrown” together as after Freddie inveigles her way onto a crime scene, she finds herself, rather unwillingly roped onto the murder team. The two are friends of old, though friends no-more & there is some animosity between them, especially on the part of Nasreen. There is some event in their past which Nasreen has found very hard to come to terms with but what is it? More on than later…

I found the story overall quite compelling but the aspect I found kept me reading is also the one I have a problem with & that’s the overall credibility. Apparently Freddie is the only person who can follow/interpret the killers twitter feed – yeah right? Maybe decades of doing cryptic crosswords have stood me in good stead ‘cos the clues were easy to de-cipher but could the police team solve them? No! The whole attitude to technology seemed weird. Moast was shocked by a mobile buzzing! But without the fact that Freddie is the only person who can track the killer, the story would be pretty much a non-starter as it’s the foundation of the book. Consequently, while I found this idea a stretch to accept, it was also what made the story entertaining for me – a bit bizarre eh?

So pushing this credibility issue aside I carried on reading fairly happily. I wasn’t overly fond of any of the characters, maybe Freddie would grow on me, some of her qualities were okay. I did like the way the chapters were headed with acronyms – which were very helpfully explained for folk like me! ;o)

There are a few red herrings along the way but no real twists with the story resolved with the killer being caught (oops…hope that’s not a spoiler!), though the reveal fell a bit flat. While not working out the actual killer, I had sussed out a key fact about them so it came as no great surprise. The tension between Nasreen & Freddie is also revealed, something which I was also a little disappointed with. Still at least I discovered what it was & haven’t been kept dangling with the thought of having to read more…because, yes, this is part one of "The Social Media Murders".

I guess the key question is will I read more in the series? Hmmm…the jury is out on that at the moment. I didn’t engage enough with the characters to be enthusiastic to revisit them & I also suspect future novels will be in a very – if not too – similar vein. At the moment, I think it fair to say I’ll probably read the next instalment if I come across it but I won’t be hunting it down.

Overall probably worth a read – but not if you’re a police procedure buff :o)

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